The Media War on Optimism
The latest news on CNN.com as of 6:30PM October 17th:
THE LATEST
- 1. Human remains at Victoria’s Secret?
- 2. Al Gore tried to buy Twitter
- 3. Texas: Duo skipped tolls 14,358 times
- 4. School bus hijacked in Arkansas
- 5. See school bus during hijacking
- 6. ‘Transformers’ director assaulted
- 7. Stenographer rants on House floor
- 8. See video of bizarre outburst
- 9. Crossfire: Obama’s agenda in peril?
- 10. NFL under fire for pink sales
- 11. Fans can buy, sell stock in athletes
Since the 1930s, depression rates have skyrocketed in the U.S. as well as other Western countries. Reasons for such increase include: improper diagnosis by clinicians, the idea of “depression” permeating our culture, our easy-fix society, and the news. For the purposes of this article, I’m only going to talk about the news.
First let’s define depression — depression stems from a person’s tendency to: have a negative worldview, ruminating over negativity, and a belief that the bad situation is permanent and pervasive. For example, a person prone to depression who sees story number 3 in the latest headlines would believe that: a. The world is a bad place filled with bad people, this is just an example of it (permanent), b. Many people would do this if given the chance (pervasive), c. “Why are people so awful?” “men are always breaking laws” “I feel awful for abiding by the rules all the time” “why is society going the wrong way?” (rumination).
If you look at the latest news, 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 are all negative headlines. That means 9 out of 11 headlines deal in negativity. Why? Because negative things are out of the ordinary and attract our attention. We pay attention to changes in the pattern way more than what fits the typical pattern itself. Evolutionary speaking, psychologists has found that these innate instincts to pay attention to change actually mattered — we paid attention to changes in the pastures because a predator may be out there, we paid attention to a baby crying in the night because we are programmed to respond to the needs of our child.
What people have forgotten is that media doesn’t report reality exactly as it is, media acts like a magnifying glass and not a looking class, it highlights certain things in society. There is a bias towards the negative because negativity is outside of the pattern, and negativity gains viewership.
The result of the media always minimizing the positive and magnifying the negative is that it turns us into pessimists. By reporting on political frauds and scandals, news has influenced the next generation to NOT go into politics or finance. Kids are told, “Oh you’re too honest to be a politician.” By reporting on all of the bank frauds and how CEOs cheat their customers, the news has also created this idea that, in order to get ahead in life, one must cheat in order to get there. Honest people who otherwise would have gone into public service and banking no longer “see themselves in that field” because of these biases.
Let’s be clear, this is not an attack on the whistle-blowers, or an attack on honest journalists who want to make a difference by pointing out all the faults we could and should correct.This IS a defense of optimism. I’m not saying it’s not important to report negative news, I am saying it is EQUALLY important to report on all the positive things that happen in the world.
As a result of negative news, optimists are seen as detached by society. People honestly believe that true optimists are plain ignorant. “How can you be so optimistic when there is so many terrible things happening in the world?” “How can you have rose-colored glasses on when people hurt each other, cheat each other and commit crimes against each other?”
“Get real!” They’d say.
The response of positive psychology is this: News report on the frauds in finance, but not on the millions and billions of honest transactions that take place each day. News report on terrorism, and not on the millions of peaceful Muslims trying to do good in this country and abroad. News report on people hurting each other, and not on the billions of people who believe and fall in love every day, who rescue refugees and animals, who fight each day for social justice. News report on blanket attacks on the shivering but not on the thousands who give to charity, who volunteer their time out of kindness, who raise millions of dollars to fight disease and pathogens.
Pessimists say “get real” and believe that optimists are detached but what is reality is that there is a lot more good in the world than bad, it’s not the optimists that have to get real, it’s actually the pessimists.
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